SPIRITUALITEIT | SPIRITUALITY

Dymphna is interwoven with Christianity, from her secret baptism by her confessor and confidant Gerebernus, to the care for the poor and needy and the hermit's residence to which she emigrates. She is therefore also accompanied by the book. But actually, her spirituality is enclosed in a short, steadfast answer: 'no'.

In the European Middle Ages, spirituality stands for the spiritual, as opposed to the physical and sensory side of life. Spirituality represents 'the heavenly sphere of light versus the dark world of matter'. Spirituality in the broadest sense relates to matters concerning the mind. The word is used in many ways and there can be connections to religion or supernatural powers, but the emphasis is on the personal, inner experience. In a strict sense, the word indicates consciousness, or the human inner being that sees its origin in a divine or other transcendence, or in relation to a higher or endlessly larger reality. Spirituality is a special, but not necessarily confessional, take on life by a human being concentrating on transcendent truth or the highest reality.

It's in the Saint Dymphna Church – the translation of a legend into a possibility of faith within a public building – that contemporary art introduces proposals that testify to man's tendency to feel part of the value of a greater reality. This happens in front of the relics of Dymphna and Gerebernus. Not only the primary relics of their bones, but also the secondary relics: the fragments of the sarcophagi in which the bones supposedly once were preserved. Around the former, there's a thirteenth-century reliquary with angels that is stored in a late Gothic casing figuring seven painted panels with scenes from the life of the saint.

With her enigmatic title image, Nel Aerts sets the tone for a series of artistic interventions that create space. The core of the body can serve as a starting point, like in the works by Dmitry Gutov, Sofie Muller or Johan Tahon, but Aerts also looks for broader connections. The smallest gesture contains the largest one, as is evident with Edith Dekyndt, Rita McBride or Guy Mees. And art can focus on essential experiences and their possibilities of giving meaning: light, in the works of with Róza El-Hassan and Nazanin Fakoor; colour like in those of Alfons Hoppenbrouwers and Philippe Van Snick; height (Vadim Fishkin); time (Suchan Kinoshita and Jacqueline Mesmaeker). And finally language as an experience (leaving behind the mind and) going for a broader meaning, such as in the works by Bia Davou, Evgeny Granilshchikov, Mary Ellen Solt and Where Dogs Run.

For Middle Gate II, Guy Rombouts creates a work that he considered for the first Middle Gate: a hat alphabet. It has become a silent work, spread over the church's prayer chairs, with each of the letters of the alphabet getting its own hat, folded from a blank sheet of paper that was once destined for the Geel newspaper.

About M HKA / Mission Statement

The M HKA is a museum for contemporary art, film and visual culture in its widest sense. It is an open place of encounter for art, artists and the public. The M HKA aspires to play a leading role in Flanders and to extend its international profile by building upon Antwerp's avant-garde tradition. The M HKA bridges the relationship between artistic questions and wider societal issues, between the international and the regional, artists and public, tradition and innovation, reflection and presentation. Central here is the museum's collection with its ongoing acquisitions, as well as related areas of management and research.

About M HKA Ensembles

The M HKA Ensembles represent our first steps towards initiating the public to today's art-related digital landscape. With the help of these new media, our aim is to offer our artworks a better and fuller array of support for their presentation and public understanding.

The application has been fully developed in-house at the M HKA, and is easily accessible via a wide range of devices: smartphones, tablets and desktop computers.

This public version is no island unto itself; it is enframed within a larger digital whole. The content comes directly from the ‘ensemble bank’, a broadly-supported working platform that encourages diverse layers of meaning around the artworks. Production unit, curators, procurement policy (external as well): each has its role to play. In this way, visitors are just 1 click away from this informative database as they amble through the exhibition rooms. M HKA is determined to extend this exercise in the years to come, and so even further enhance the visitor’s experience.

Disclaimer

The information found on this platform is copyright-free unless otherwise indicated, and so is free as well for exclusively private (re)use, as long as citation is duly provided. Further use and the reproduction of multimedia-information (image, sound and other applications) always required prior permission. Unless otherwise indicated, all used reproductions are provenance of the M HKA. Despite our best efforts concerning copyright holders, if information appears incorrect or incomplete, please contact us via ensembles@muhka.be.

Credits

M HKA Ensembles is the result of a large-scale interest and effort in digital display of content regarding contemporary art.